Thursday, December 11, 2008

I thought I'd post the inspiration for the poem From Vatnajokull to Sargasso. My friend Paul e-mailed me this picture he created, and explained it's inspiration, which is partially quoted below.

"30 years have passed since I was in the Sargasso Sea... named for the seaweed that reminded early Portuguese explorers of Salgazo grapes. I take a sip of wine. It is true that the only company I kept during my churchyard haunting was that of the local wildlife. I can remember leaning against the heavy ancient tombs, listening to the wind tickle the the long thin meadow grass; the birds sweet twittering only there to distract me from their nests.

The hawsers stretch across the deck, over windlass and into the becalmed Sargasso. They drag there until the sea unknots the tangled hemp.

I'm looking at a painting I started some years back - a Photoshop enhanced version appears above. I started a few like this. I was responding to the patterns that I saw in nature.

The bark of trees...

Lichen growing on stone...

Sand ripples left by the receding tide.

As is so often the case with this kind of doodling, I started to see half familiar shapes emerging from the squiggling foam. A creature here and there. The hint of something hidden just below the surface. A place from the past."

SerenityPoured through a sieveEvery hole similarNothing changesIn this roomNo windowsNo doorsYet, luminescence varies in the passingRed, yellow, green, blueBeads in a prismStrung on daisy chains of lightWaiting

Friday, December 5, 2008

Here's another one for the Saturday Share. I'm not crazy about the poem, but I think the picture turned out kind of cool. When I was layering a couple of my photos in photoshop to go along with the poem, the girl just mysteriously appeared. I airbrushed her a little to make her stand out. Originally, I had no intention to have her in there, but I guess she was determined to be a part of her own dance.

Dark Dance

Stark Cypress sway in celebrationChild of midnight spinning roundShadows explode with symphonic elationLost in song on this frozen ground

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Annually, I make my trek to memorialize the day I brought you home to a rocky land of cactus and Mesquite thorn. Ceremoniously, I cling to you through your family in a silence that is interrupted intermittently by the call of a wild turkey. We gather on this harsh prickly land, and I brace myself for the season’s chill. Your family comforts me, though, within this Hill Country’s beauty that you knew so intimately.

Burnt sienna and burnt umber whisper with a frigid November breath. There, vermillion dotting rolling hills against an azure sky, hushed briars nestle in for winter. A sunset highlights the spiny edges of a Prickly Pear and the golden seed heads of wild grasses. Muted beauty that you are continuously revealing to me still.

I never cared much for Fall. I never wanted Summer to end. You and I together finding so many sun bright things to do. Since your death that blindingly blank summer day, I long for Fall’s consoling blanket of solitude. I long to escape failed expectations of summer togetherness, like the way a fallen leaf is alee the cold Autumn wind. Now the quiescent place you call home mirrors my parched brittle soul that is beginning to adorn new colors of beauty you’ve yet to see.

Fitting it was then, that it was Fall when I carried you home. We spread your ashes among rock and bone under changing trees. We held each other to say good bye and remember you, but that reclusive fire that took you, laid hold of me. It’s been changing my hues to burnt earthen pigments. A newfound beauty decries the emptiness that the fire refines. Fire and ashes in my veins, but my bones are growing cold. Autumn’s beauty carries me beyond the soundless deer seeking shelter, beyond your ashes undisturbed.